Fuel Hotel Marketing Podcast: Episode 76 – Don’t Believe The Hype About Blockchain Or Voice Search…Yet

There is a lot of buzz in the hotel industry about both blockchain and voice search. While both are undoubtedly going to have a major impact on society, the Fueligans have a lively discussion about both of these ‘megatrends’ and analyze the likely impact that they will have on the average hotelier in the next twelve months. Do you need to drop everything you’re doing and jump on board the hype train? We think not.
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SHOW NOTES:
1. Blockchain
What is “blockchain”?
Think of blockchain as a secure digital ledger.
How does “blockchain” actually work?
There are a bunch of great resources out there that explain this better than we can: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+does+blockchain+work&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1-ab
What does blockchain mean for the travel industry?
Truth is, for right now, not a whole lot. Listen to the episode and hear why we don’t think you need to be doing anything differently right now. While blockchain will have a big influence on the future of transactions, banking, insurance and healthcare. It’s going to be a while before it has a meaningful impact on day-to-day hotel operations.
2. Voice Search
Voice Search Growth & Usage

1. 1. • According to 2017 study — 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated device (NOT including smart phones) at least once per month (a 128.6% increase over 2016)
      • The voice assist market is expected to grow 23.1% this year with more than 60 million users utilizing voice assistants at least once per month
      • This represents nearly 20% of Americans

Voice Search In The Travel Space

1. • Several travel brands have dedicated “skills” available for voice assistants
     • Kayak (owned by Priceline.com) → flight tracker, KAYAK explore, and travel search
     • Expedia → Less planning oriented, more focused on assisting guests with details of current / already planned trip (arrival / departure times for flights, check-in times for hotel, car rentals, etc.)
     • Other travel brands are slowly expanding → Transportation (Uber, Lyft) and airlines

Listener wishes:

• Ron Stevenson
  • This would be first for branded hotels. For independent hotels this is already possible.   A tool or technology that could log into the respective brand data warehouse and pull the monthly data into a dashboard So that brand and independent hotels could be compared on attribution points Visits , conversion, ADR, etc. Then if the data could then be pivoted to show month over month comparisons if would make life so much easier.

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In The Newsies
Page Speed is now a mobile ranking factor
https://searchengineland.com/google-speed-update-page-speed-will-become-ranking-factor-mobile-search-289904
Why Expedia or Priceline Might Just Be the Next Great Hotel Brand
https://skift.com/2018/01/23/why-expedia-or-priceline-might-just-be-the-next-great-hotel-brand/
Google rolls out AI based predictive flight cancellation notifications
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/google-flights-will-now-predict-airline-delays-before-the-airlines-do/
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@_travelboom
@stuartbutler
@marketingmeisha
@makavanagh
@pdimaio
@pforiska

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